In the production of continuous filament glass strands, it is sometimes desirable to supply, simultaneously, more than one strand to a given package. In some instances, a plurality of filaments are drawn from a single fiber forming feeder and two groups of four strands each are wound into two separate packages. That is, each package receives a group of four separate bundles of filaments.
To provide such separate bundles, the filaments are "split" into separate strands or bundles through the use of guide "shoes".
As shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,821,543, issued to Gelin et al. on June 28, 1974, first and second guide shoes are employed to split the filaments into four distinct bundles to be wound in close proximity to one another in a single package.
As is known in the art, the glass filaments are coated with a sizing or binder to reduce interfilament abrasion. Unfortunately, since the individual strands are wound in close proximity to one another and the size, generally, has not been dried or cured, two or more of the individual strands may tend to adhere to one another to form a larger, but undesirable, strand. That is, instead of acting as, for example, four independent strands, the group will act as three or fewer independent strands of substantially unequal number of filaments therein.
The present invention described herein, has been shown to reduce the tendency of the "splits" to adhere to one another and to reduce the tendency for such strands to form undesirable "loops" at the package, and thus providing a more desirable packaging of multi-strand packages.